The Languages of Indonesian Politics

The language of contemporary Indonesian politics has recently been the object of a certain amount of attention, usually rather cantankerous, from Gallic and American critics. While the French observers have tended to see mainly "reiterations obsessionelles" and "les cris sourds d'une civilisation Inourante*1, our more programoriented analysts have concerned themselves with what they feel to be vague sloganeering and hypocritical propagandizing. In both cases, however, the forms of modern Indonesian, in so far as they are understood, are seen as forms of evasion and defeat before the challenges of the Old West, and in the gloomy comments of both can be detected an unmistakeable Schadenfreude. No one has yet attempted to look at the language of contemporary Indonesia as an enterprise for the mastery of a gigantic cultural crisis, and a partly subconscious project for the assumption of "modernity" within the modalities of an autonomous and autochthonous socialpolitical tradition. Yet this is of decisive importance for the generations that lie ahead, since with every decade that passes, "Indonesian" is becoming more and more the one language through which Indonesians of all kinds are coming to grips with modern and ancient realities. The polyglots of the colonial and early post-revolutionary period are slowly beginning to disappear from the scene. The "new Indonesian" is therefore of paramount import ance for the shaping of the younger Indonesian national conscious ness .